Should CreekSide sell beer?

Dear Fellow CreekSide Co-op Member-Owners,

In keeping with CreekSide's mission statement, the board is dedicated to governing the Co-op in a manner that is responsive to the values and perspectives of its ownership. When considering major changes to the store, we do our best to collect maximum input. In response to market opportunity and demand from a subset of our member-ownership, the Board is looking into the possibility of selling beer at CreekSide. No decision has been made yet and we need your input after you have read through the following rationale and constraints.

While we are continuing to sharpen a conservative business case for selling beer, there are several compelling reasons for selling beer including:

meeting a demand that exists in our immediate community for a local seller of beer in six-pack or single bottle quantities, rather than by the case at a distributor,

making CreekSide a more attractive destination for a larger market of customers,

bringing another revenue and profit stream into the store and increasing store sales in other departments, and

providing CreekSide with a competitive advantage that can lead to long-term profitability and sustainability.

As with anything involving the sale of alcohol in PA, there are a host of regulations to understand and limitations to consider. Building on work done several years ago by the Co-op’s board, a dedicated task force has spent the last several months researching and analyzing the various and complex impacts that selling beer would have on the store, and we have determined the following:

For the license that the Co-op appears eligible for, the licensed space for selling beer needs to be 300 square feet and walled off from the non-licensed space, with its own cash register for all beer sales. There must be a minimum of 30 seats available for the consumption of beer in the licensed space and we must allow the consumption of beer in the licensed area of the store at all times that we are selling beer. We can restrict the hours during which we sell beer. The community room is the optimal space for beer sales, however the sale of beer in the community room would prevent minors from hanging out there unattended. Therefore, in the spirit of the “community” room, we are recommending minor renovations to the front corner of the store where produce is sold and moving the community room to this space at the store’s entrance. The current community room space will be renovated to meet regulations for beer sales. Locating beer sales in the current community room space will minimize renovation costs and allow for the beer garden’s future growth with close proximity to the kitchen and to its own entrance on the patio. We do not anticipate that these renovations will reduce shelf space for any other products in the store, though we can expect slight changes to the store layout.

There is a 6 to 9 month lead time between application and the granting of the license, if it is granted, and no store improvements related to the licensed space can begin until the license is issued. The likely timeframe for CreekSide to be able to sell beer would be in the late spring or summer of 2017.

Regulations require that there be an employee dedicated to beer expertise on staff. The sale of beer would require an additional full-time hire and associated costs. It is possible that that person could be responsible for another store department.

We will likely need to go back to the Cheltenham Board of Commissioners for their endorsement of our plan, as their original endorsement was in January of 2013.

Research into local retailers of beer show that these stores sell from $5 to $15 per six-pack, depending on brand and quality. CreekSide’s management is committed to selling brands of beer that our community wants to buy at prices that are in line with our competitors.

The cost of the beer license will be $50,000, the anticipated renovations and equipment will be $30,000, and the start-up costs for initial stocking and hiring would be $20,000.

CreekSide has access to loans and grant money that will help cover much of these costs, but we anticipate that we will need to raise $20,000 or more from the community to realize the dream of selling beer. A successful fundraising effort will demonstrate the community’s commitment to buying beer at CreekSide.

Given the above information, it is critical to gauge the community’s interest in both selling beer and contributing to the fundraising effort. Please follow this link and complete the online survey to let us know what you and your family members think about selling beer at the Co-op. We ask for only one completed survey per member-owner household and thus require that you include your member-owner number and name for verification purposes. Non-member-owners may participate in the survey by entering N/A in the number field